Review and Give-Away: Aquarius Game

Update: This give away is now closed.  The winner, "justicecw," chosen by random.org, has been notified by email. 

We've posted before about our love of board games as a tool for homeschooling, let alone for just plain fun.  And we have shared our fondness for Icehouse pieces.  They're made by Looney Labs, a super fun games company co-founded by two ex-NASA engineers.  (The company's best selling game, another that we love and keeping meaning to introduce to our son, is Flux).  I'm really excited to be reviewing a new-to-us Looney Labs game today, and to get to share the love by offering a copy to give away to one of our readers.

Aquarius - Description/Review

From the Looney Labs website:

In this colorful game, cards are laid down so that edges match up like dominoes. The goal is to connect seven panels of your secret element. Gameplay is simple matching that even young kids can follow, but Action cards let players switch goals, hands, or move cards around, and encourage strategy and bluffing that will keep adults on their toes, too. And don't forget -- the player with the longest hair gets to go first!
Number of Players: 2-5
Ages: 5 to adult
Game Length: 20-30 minutes 

One really cool thing about this game, from a parent's perspective, is that the directions include a preschooler variant.  Actually, they contain multiple variants -- for ages 3-4, ages 5-6, and ages 6+ -- in addition to the full game.  The variants build off of each other, so that with each age range, the players learn additional aspects of the game, allowing them to understand all of the rules in a gradual way.  There are no choking hazard issues, because the game is entirely composed of cards. 

Our experience: We've been playing only the ages 3-4 year old variation with our nearly 3 year-old, and it is quite fun.  At first I was a little confused about how to line up the cards properly when playing, but full color diagrams in the directions explain it all very well, and once you get the hang of it, it's a cinch.  The Bibliophile enjoys it (we've never left a game unfinished), and he's such a little gamer that I think he'll enjoy it even more when we start adding in the more complicated rules, which we'll be doing shortly.  I just need to spend some time with the rules myself when he's asleep sometime, so that I'm familar enough with them to explain it all to him in a way that he'll understand.  It is great that someone took the time to think through how to introduce the game in stages, so I don't have to!  For that reason alone, I was an instant fan.  Since we'll soon be adding a sibling to our family mix, I love the idea that one game can serve multiple age groups in this way.


Win your own copy of Aquarius!

Looney Labs has offered to send Aquarius to one lucky reader.  To enter:
1) Leave a comment just saying you'd like to win or something similar (mandatory entry)
 extra entries
2) Go to the Looney Labs store and leave a comment on this post telling me another product that you think sounds fun.
3) Follow or subscribe to Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile in some way and leave a comment letting me know.
4) Tweet, Facebook, or blog about the give away and leave a comment here letting me know.

Maximum number of entries per person: 4.  Deadline is midnight EST on October 8, 2010.  Prize ships only to U.S. addresses.  Please make sure that your email address is either in your profile or one of your comments; I need a way to reach you if you win.  Good luck!

Disclosure: We recieved a demo copy of Aquarius at no charge in order to write this review.  The opinions in this post are our own.  If you click on any links in this post and purchase anything, we may earn a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.